THE SON OF THE SHEIK

US, 1926, 68 minutes, Black and white.
Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Agnes Ayres, George Fawcett, Montagu Love.
Directed by George Fitzmaurice.

The Son of the Sheik is the last film of the very popular star of the 1920s, Rudolph Valentino. Valentino had migrated from Italy in the hopes of making a career in Hollywood and was successful by 1920 and made such films as The Sheik, The Eagle and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There was no reason to think he would not have a long career, but he died at the age of 31, with a vast funeral and many fans in attendance and grief all over the world.

Many see The Sheik as something of a great iconic film because of the status of Valentino, his screen presence, he is magnetism, sex appeal. It is a popular story based on the novel by Edith Maude Hull and written for the screen by the celebrated writer, soon to be Oscar-winner, Frances Marion. The story is straightforward, the son of the Sheik goes to the city and is charmed by a dancer, played by Vilma Banky. However, under the thumb of her French father, she has been promised to one of the rogues of the desert. But she falls in love with the Sheik. When he follows her, he is captured by her father and his band and tortured.

The film moves to the older Sheik, seen with his wife, Agnes Ayres reprising her role from the original film. He wants to control his son and make the choice of whom is to marry. Valentino is so well made up that it is difficult to see the Sheik as Valentino, especially in some split-screen sequences with both Valentinos!

The robbers also tell the son of the Sheik that he has been seduced by the dancer who has employed these tactics many times. He, of course, is very angry. When he encounters the dancer again, he is hostile, aggressively sexual, which she sometimes accepts but begins to hate him.

Needless to say, with the intervention of the Sheik, the son learns the truth and is happily reunited with the dancer – but with some fisticuffs and fights to add to the action.

In many ways the film is quite laughable, the old styles of silent films which were soon to come to an end, the melodramatic screenplay, the poses and postures, the attempts at being sexy and seductive in the 1920s. However, it is typical of many of the entertainments of the time. But, 25 years later, Universal Studios would be doing something similar with such matinee action adventures, starring Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, like The Prince who was a Thief.
For the archives.